578 A House Divided: The Griffin Family of Whiteside and Frontier Conflict in the 1840s† Libby Connors* on 1 February 1849, Captain george griffin recorded in the Whiteside station diary, ‘at 8am sent the dray off to brisbain with the last 5 bales wool William griffin and his wife accompanying them being expelled from the station for bad conduct.’1 William was Captain george griffin’s second son, who with his wife sarah and their child had only arrived at the station on 5 July 1848.2 Whiteside had actually been founded not by george, but by his son Francis. As a result of yet another family clash, Francis’s possessions had been removed from the station and then from by the same vessel which brought William and sarah north.3 We can only wonder what this latest filial dispute was about for Captain griffin’s station log usually only recorded the most sparing details of the day’s events. Nevertheless his diaries do provide a glimpse of some of the tensions that divided this family enterprise.

Whiteside Station • Founded 1843 by Francis griffin • Joined by his brother William March 1844 • Joined by his parents george and Jane June 1845.

George (Capt) & Jane Griffin

Francis (Capt) John Bloomfield m. Isabella Joyner 1852 Jessie Mary Ann William Robert m. sarah Source: Erica Long, ‘Early White Settlement on the ’, JRHSQ, vol. 16, no.5, 1997, p. 191

† this article has been peer reviewed. * Dr libby Connors is senior lecturer in History at the university of southern Queensland. Her recent work explores Indigenous history of the early Queensland frontier. 579 the history of the station and its neighbouring run of Samsonvale has already been so well covered by Erica long that it would be fair to ask what more could be added.4 Whiteside’s location on the borders of Dalla, undambi and lands means that it also features as part of another history, that of the ‘other side’ of the frontier. Recently Indigenous scholars have been critical of what might be termed the New left’s approach to the history of the Australian frontier, that framework of first contact, invasion and extermination, followed by segregation and assimilation that has dominated Australian historiography of the last 30 years. As Karen Martin, a Quandamoopah scholar argues, ‘the agency and experiences of Aboriginal peoples is reduced to the types of behaviours and attitudes they exhibit, all judged against a non-Aboriginal centre.’ In this kind of narrative, superior whites prevail and Indigenous agency is repeatedly denied.5 Delving into the Whiteside station records in search of Indigenous historical actors, it soon becomes clear that the problem is not just that dominant historical narratives have denied Indigenous agency; historians have probably also overstated European agency. Whiteside station is important to this wider story because of an Aboriginal attack on some sawyers that took place in september 1847, either on or neighbouring the station. the main sources of evidence about the attack are legal records and newspaper reports of the trials that arose from the attack, none of which give precise details about the location.6 only after perusing the station records does it become apparent that one of the sawyers, who survived the initial spearing, possibly died because of inaction on the part of members of Whiteside station. Despite awareness of the Indigenous presence and a fairly constant sense of threat evident in griffin’s diary, the station was hampered by internal divisions in its response to this instance of Aboriginal aggression. this has the effect of overturning our perceptions – rather than a divided Indigenous community capable of only small-scale group unity to defy Europeans. We have a white community unable to save one of its members from Aboriginal attack because of its own internal tensions. this paper builds on long’s work to extrapolate some of the micro history of the station in the years of the station diaries from 1847 to 1851. It briefly outlines some of the strains that were evident, such as religious and ethnic divisions, friction with the neighbouring station of Samsonvale, class conflict ─ for there was constant strife with hired servants ─ and lastly family quarrels which spilt over into the management of the station and would have such a negative outcome for the injured sawyer William Boller. Whiteside station was the first pastoral lease established in the Pine Rivers district after Moreton Bay was declared open to free settlement. 580 Commissioner of Crown lands, stephen simpson, listed it as one of the smallest in his district comprising 28 square miles.7 Captain Francis griffin was the licensee and, according to the Moreton Bay correspondent to the Sydney Morning Herald on 5 october 1843, he had ‘just set upon a very pretty little run’.8 In March 1844 his younger brother William joined him and in June 1845 his parents, george and Jane.9 In 1837 Francis had been captain of the steamer James Watt which brought the Petrie family to the penal settlement. the Petrie and griffin families probably knew one another in sydney through their connections with .10 george griffin, according to lang, was a ‘respectable ship-master’, and the family had been members of his sydney congregation ‘for many years’; while the Petries had migrated to New south Wales as part of lang’s scottish Mechanics Emigration scheme of 1831. the controversial politician and clergyman used this connection to stay at Whiteside during his visit to Moreton Bay in November to December 1845; his presence helps provide some critical insights into the griffins’ status and the imbroglio of personal and political relations that divided the white settlers in the district. 11 After reading the station diaries it is easy to imagine the griffins as aspi- rational members of lang’s scots’ Church congregation. george griffin’s original diary entries suggest that he was not well educated; his handwriting was poor and his spelling idiosyncratic; some of his renditions give a hint that he may have spoken with a strong regional accent, although long tells us that he had come to New south Wales after residing in south Africa. Francis griffin and his siblings were all born at the Cape of good Hope.12 the youngest son John was perhaps better educated than his father; he continued the diaries after the death of his father on 1 June 1851 when the writing and spelling improve.13 Although lang’s fiery radicalism raised the political temperature in New south Wales, his most socially disruptive attacks for the small retailers, artisans and workers, who were his support base, were probably his sectarian outbursts. throughout the 1840s, when mass opposition was building to governor george gipps’s intransigence over revenues, to gerry- mandered electorates and to the restricted franchise,14 lang could disrupt populist politics with a personal attack on a Catholic candidate or an ‘establishmentarian’ Anglican. His greatest vitriol, however, was reserved for fellow Presbyterians. lang’s splitting of the New south Wales congre- gation caused some angst for the german missionaries at Nundah, Francis griffin’s nearest European neighbours when he first arrived in 1843; in this church schism the missionaries sided with lang, their founder, resulting 581 in lengthy questioning from gipps about their position when he visited the settlement in March 1842.15 Another cleric greatly aggrieved by lang’s public rants was the Reverend John gregor, Anglican priest for the district of Moreton Bay and a regular visitor to Whiteside station. He had arrived in the colony as a Presbyterian minister but after a church dispute in 1842 took holy orders in the Church of England under Bishop William Broughton in December 1842. lang devoted the front page of his paper, the Colonial Observer, to a personal attack on gregor in August 1842; and there was another attack in september when he first became Deacon in the Anglican Church. But lang’s desire for vengeance did not stop there; derogatory correspondence and further condemnatory reports appeared in a third issue of the paper.16 so John gregor, who arrived in on board the same vessel that brought Captain John Clements Wickham, the new Police Magistrate and later government Resident for the district in January 1843, commenced his duties with religious rancour resounding in his ears. It is likely that, even if gregor had not left the Presbyterian synod and triggered this attack from lang, tensions would soon have arisen between the two men over colonial politics. lang was a staunch proponent of manhood suffrage, whereas John gregor was an unequivocal conservative. like many of the northern pastoralists, he opposed democracy and was horrified at the thought of emancipists and lowly workmen having a hold on government. tom Archer, despite his own pro-pastoralist politics, was acerbic in his assessment of gregor’s political views. ‘When I ventured to advance the axiom “Vox populi, vox Dei,” Archer wrote of one political argument, he ‘answered “No, sir! Vox populi, vox Diaboli!”’17 so it is not surprising that lang continued his personal attacks on gregor (and his condemnation of the Anglican and Catholic churches too, of course) in his book on Cooksland in 1847.18 As gregor soon had a deeply divided congregation,19 lang’s attack and these local divisions had implications for the griffins ─ not only because the small white community had only two clergymen in this period, but also because the cleric’s brother Andrew established a station bordering griffins’.20 Andrew gregor and his female servant were killed on this station in october 1846 in an Aboriginal attack that shocked the white community. this inevitably brought the griffins into fairly regular contact with Reverend John gregor who inherited the station after the death of his brother. george griffin’s response to the sectarianism of his day is difficult to fathom since his attitude to clergy appears to be entwined with that of class; his perceptions of status are more easily identified in his diary. 582 Whiteside was on the main northern road to Brisbane and the griffins accorded bush hospitality to the pastoralists who passed along its way. squatters and the highest officials who visited the station were usually recorded with their titles. Workers were simply identified by surname when it was required information for station accounts, such as when a labourer was first contracted or given leave. Working class women, children and Indigenous locals were rarely named although their presence was often indicated. so in January 1847, george wrote: saturday 9th light winds and Cloudy inclinable for rain Frank & Day employed Pressing wool John & Brown gone out to the sheep station with a dray load of hurdles and the hut Keepers wife & 2 children gamble employed in the corn paddock. the wording for 18 February 1849, however, was ‘at 3pm Mr Balfour Mr D McKenzy and Mr Brown arrived’.21 When John gregor appears in the station records he is usually accorded a title, either ‘Reverend’ or ‘Mr’. His title is only omitted when the entry establishes his social rank anyway, so on the morning of 10 February 1847, griffin notes that gregor left Whiteside ‘for his station’ and that evening ‘gregor and his Man Friday returned.’22 status seemed to matter more to george griffin than either politics or religion. He not only lacked lang’s antipathy to gregor, but he was also quite off-hand with lang’s protégés, the german missionaries. In 1847 gregor was living with the german community at Nundah where they helped him remove the stock from Forgiese station after his brother’s death.23 While gregor is afforded literary respect in the station diary, the lay missionaries are unnamed – they are merely ‘the germans’; they and gregor’s servants are referred to only in this manner on several occasions from March to June 1847. on 9 June, for example, griffin notes that ‘two men arrived from the germans to fetch away gregors Dray’. Even when the lay missionaries stayed overnight at the station, as they did on 18 May, they remain anonymous.24 the german missionaries’ interven- tion when convicts and soldiers had been found at the Aboriginal camps, and their reporting of the Kilcoy poisonings, had won them few friends in Brisbane. tom Archer wrote enthusiastically to his parents from Durundur station in May 1842 that he and his brothers had ‘made the acquaintance of the Missionaries who seem to be good sincere people,’ but he immediately added ‘tho’ there is a great outcry against them at Brisbane town’.25 griffin’s distant approach suggests he might have shared the white community’s wariness towards them even though by 1847 the small german community had ceased operating as a mission confining 583 their activities to farming and only occasional evangelising to the black and white communities.26 this reserve was probably reinforced by other intersections of religion and local frontier politics. In December 1846 in the aftermath of the attack on Andrew gregor’s station, a prominent local Catholic, sub-Collector of Customs, William Duncan, had used his sydney newspaper contacts to make a fuss about police and town reprisals against local Aboriginal people.27 then in April 1847 george griffin’s station was the subject of allegations of Aboriginal poisoning reported anonymously in the sydney paper The Australian. griffin had taken his dray to Brisbane on 2 March and there found one of his labourers, James Brown, at the court office making a complaint against fellow Whiteside workers. Brown accused his co-workers of mixing flour and arsenic and leaving it in a hut where they knew Aboriginal people would find it.the Moreton Bay Courier, which had made a fuss about Aboriginal threats to Whiteside station, failed to report this example of white aggression; but an unnamed Moreton Bay settler gave the story to the sydney paper which reported that griffin had galloped back to the station to warn his staff. there is no evidence about the religious convictions of this anonymous correspondent but the past actions of the german missionaries and of Duncan could be part of the explanation for griffin’s guardedness towards lang’s protégés. With the benefit of hindsight there is a certain irony ing riffin’s cavalier attitude to the german missionaries given his attention to status; not only did several of the lay missionaries eventually seek ordination, and therefore gain social status, but after the close of the mission they individually established cattle and dairying properties to become landholders comparable with the griffins.28 the griffins also had strained relations with their other neighbours on Samsonvale station, owned jointly by William Mason and William Joyner’s widow, Isabella. Was it social grievance or the words of a disappointed lover when John griffin recorded on 7 March 1848 ‘Mason’s dray past here with Mrs Joiner and her mother in it. Never called here’? Although later reminiscences tell us that John griffin and Isabella Joyner were married in sydney in 1852,29 Joyner was a young mother not yet twelve months widowed when griffin made this entry. In November relations between the households deteriorated. In May 1848, hutkeeper thomas Brady had died as a result of a heart attack but it was not until November that the Clerk of the Peace requested the station to surrender the dead man’s horses. When they were mustered after the shearing, Francis griffin informed William Mason, but it was not a happy exchange. According to george, ‘I immeadantly wrote a note to Masion enforming him by my heldest son that 584 he could have the late bradys colt by giving me a recepte for the same but in place of sending me an answer back he began to abuse my son in a most ungentlyman manner’. there is not enough information to untangle the source of the discord here; but the griffins did offer Samsonvale support in March 1849 when Mason accidentally shot himself and in February when Mason came to Whiteside requesting the griffins’ support in what they believed to be an impending Aboriginal attack: at 9.30 AM recived a note from Mason signed I Joyner requesting Emmeadate assistance thear lifes being in danger with the blacks My son being down the run at the time I could not send any till he returned at 10.30 … I sent him over and on his arriving he found all quiet … at 2 he started off down our run but saw no blacks.30 griffin it seems responded to a note from Isabella Joyner rather than Mason’s personal appeal. Although mutual threat could bring neighbours together, the vicissitudes of class relations kept members of Whiteside at odds with one another. As supporters of lang, the griffins should have been opponents of the renewal of the convict system and of the system of Irish female orphan immigration which the Brisbane langites had derided as a system to provide female companions to the convicts belatedly sent by Earl grey. 31 However, the griffins employed one of the orphans in september 1849 and the arrival of an Exile ship was noted in the diary in october 1849. No doubt these revised views were because, like all pastoralists, they suffered from the lack of skilled labour and the unavailability of general labour especially during shearing.32 station time was repeatedly taken up with court appearances in cases brought by both workers and employer; on at least one occasion, griffin won his case under the pro-employerMaster and Servants Act, only to discharge the recalcitrant and resentful employee within a matter of months.33 Rather than go to the expense of making a complaint before the courts, some workers preferred to refuse to work, to go absent without leave, to return late after being given time off and to find other ways to assert their view of workplace rights. one shepherd, James lockyer, was granted leave from Friday 23 until tuesday 27 July 1847 but did not return for a week when george griffin recorded that he was too sick for work ‘through debauch’. there were fights among staff causing disruption as well, but george griffin tended to record these with sparing detail.34 What shocked him the most was abuse and insubordination towards his wife. He devoted two pages to detailing a dispute between Jane griffin and a domestic servant over washing and cooking. the gendered nature of the workplace was evident in george’s non-intervention despite witnessing the 585 servant’s defiance. He noted with pride that in the face of much abuse, ‘Mrs g never answered her.’ the domestic servant’s husband, on the other hand, stood by ‘encouraging her … to knock off work and not to do anything but what she liked as he could maintaine her without work’,35 which summed up the dilemma for the griffins and many other landholders. It is worth citing one more case of workplace discord to give a sense of the divisions that lay beneath the surface of station life. Jane griffin kept a fine fowl yard, according to lang,36 and also seems to have been responsible for the dairy. one fine autumn morning, lawrance Battisk came down from the milking yard leaving 2 cows unmilked & when asked why he did not finished he commenced with a great deal of insolent language to Mrs griffin telling her he had milked more now than her fancy man and he would be damned he would be humbugged by any man in the country or woman rather and he should be off and while we whear at breakfast he marched off without saying another word to anyone.37 Despite these workplace woes, griffin never stinted on employing extra men in the face of Indigenous attacks. on 12 september 1847, george documented that he had: found it absolutely nessary to engage Dunsford and Caruthers … for the protection of life and property having received Information that the saltwater blacks whear [h]overing about the run with a determination if possible to cutt off the men at the lambing station and take away the sheep. It is impossible to be sure how many staff were on the station at any one time because of the discontinuities in the station records and the vagueness of details regarding what appears to be fairly constant reliance on Indigenous labour. the griffins employed Aboriginal people to take messages, herd sheep and cattle, harvest the corn and provide bark for roofing during their continuous construction of station buildings in the early years. the high level of inter-racial cooperation together with high levels of inter-racial violence is one of the most important insights of the station diaries. Eight years after Francis griffin founded the station, the family still regularly faced Indigenous aggression. In November 1851 John recorded that he was unable to leave the station ‘as the Blacks were about’.38 Although lang had spent his time at Whiteside recording important details of the traditional owners’ way of life, the griffins do not appear to have sought to reach any cultural understanding with the North Pine turrbal. If they had, they might have been more alert to the preliminary events of the 1847 attack on the sawyers on their station. on a clear frosty day in late June 1847, John griffin was herding cattle on the coastal parts of the run when he came across a large pullen-pullen on Ningy Ningy 586 lands. some weeks later his father received information that there were about 10 or 12 men ‘in the scrub with the sawyers’. these reports did not cause alarm; in fact george employed an Aboriginal man on the station in August.39 Had the griffins paid more attention to the sawyers they had employed, they might have been more concerned. sawyers were on the station fairly permanently in 1847 to construct a new house,40 and griffin had been employing one of them to assist with ploughing in early september.41 one of the three, James smith, however, had previously been working on Doboy Creek in November 1846 when timber-getters murdered the turrbal man, Yillbong.42 Yillbong, whom the Europeans referred to as Millbong Jemmy, was entrapped by the sawyers and shot at point-blank range in the back of the head. Remarkably he did not die immediately but on the back of a dray during the two hour journey into Brisbane undertaken by the men to claim a reward for his capture.43 His death was greeted with dismay by the region’s Indigenous communities who held a large meeting at York’s Hollow in December 1846,44 no doubt to consider their response to his killing. this gathering has been discussed by a number of historians as it led to an infamous police raid on the Indigenous camp and the shooting of Jacky Jacky whose body was never recovered.45 the newly-arrived customs officer Duncan, horrified by the behaviour of the police towards the local Indigenous community, created enough of a public fuss to make the government hold an inquiry into the events.46 stung by the second killing, it is quite possible that the gathering held in the safer vicinity of the coast in June 1847, and witnessed by John griffin, was the continu- ation of this disrupted meeting. In all likelihood the meeting canvassed responses to Yillbong’s murder and agreed on appropriate payback for his death. In that case the presence of the Indigenous men at the sawyers’ camp was in all probability to reconnoitre and plan the administration of punishment in accordance with customary law. george griffin had no time to reflect on such matters.t he tensions with the domestic servant unsettled him from 30 August to 1 september and he was on edge waiting for the return of his eldest son Frank, who had been reported to have arrived in Brisbane but had still not made his way out to the station. their northern neighbour, tom Archer, summed up Francis griffin for his family at home in Norway as ‘a very dear little fellow’ but was pessimistic about his squatting abilities. tom explained to his father that Captain griffin with a small amount of capital, had ‘bought sheep, came into the bush and is likely to lose it all again being perfectly ignorant of the management of a station.’47 587 these words written in 1844 were prophetic. Erica long has revealed the financial problems besetting the station.48 Frank’s absences had left george and Jane as managers of the station, and they had apparently been putting their funds into its upkeep. george wrote of his ‘partnership’ with his son who had mortgaged parts of the station without sharing the proceeds with george or depositing them in the bank in an account in joint names. When Frank finally came up to Whiteside he brought a friend by the name of Marjoribanks with him for moral and legal support in his struggles with his father.49 on his third day back, on 6 september 1847 george noted: Frank engaged with Marjoribanks all day trying to break up the partnership between him and me. At 3pm Mr Frank marched of to Masions and thear concocted a profession to me and although he had Mr Marjoribanks at his hut waiting … the greater part of the day but notwithstanding he seemed to be afraid to say or hand me the [document] until they had consulted Masion.50 the next morning at 8.30 am, the father and son finally faced one another: Mr Frank delivered a sealed letter to me which I refused to open until he brought Marjoribanks to be present and at 11 am he brought him and proposed to continue to superintend till after shearing or dissolve Eameedantly which I objected to comply with but still he refused to give up the Bills or any part of the money for property which he sold or to place the same in the bank in our Joint Names.51 three days later the station awoke to a dull, cloudy day. In the father-son deadlock, Frank had gone out to assist with the lambing while the youngest son was ‘cleaning up the small arms’ as they had received word that the ‘saltwater blacks’ were going to spear the cattle. It was misinformation. Instead, at lunchtime an inter-tribal group of men exacted payback on the sawyers.52 James smith survived and made it to Whiteside where the alarm was raised at 2.30pm. george griffin ‘emmeadantly sent all the disposable force I had to bring the [other] man in’. this was smith’s mate, the sawyer William Boller, who had also survived but had multiple spear wounds and could not make it to the station unassisted. griffin also sent a party to search for the cook, William Waller, who was already dead; but his body would not be found for another day. At sunset george turned his attention to Boller and ordered a horse to be saddled so that Marjoribanks could ride to Brisbane for medical assistance. Boller had internal injuries for he was passing blood and very weak.53 Here the family tensions disrupted their response to the crisis. It is not clear whether griffin’s orders were not conveyed directly to Marjoribanks or whether he had some other reason for refusing to ride to Brisbane as 588 we do not have Marjoribanks’ views. He chose instead to write a note to Captain Wickham and sent an Aboriginal man to deliver it. strangely, ‘at 10pm the black came back and said he could not find the roadthe poor man all this time lay bleeding …’. When Boller survived the night, george sent word the next morning to their neighbour, Mason, to see if he was going into Brisbane to inform the authorities and bring help and was informed that he was. Again there was either misinformation in the midst of the crisis or Mason changed his mind, for more than three hours later george learned that he had not gone to Brisbane. In that time, Waller’s body had been found thanks to the dead man’s dog and the corpse brought to the station. george now had one gravely ill man, one wounded and another dead ─ but still no one had taken responsibility for getting official help. Assistance eventually arrived at 4pm that afternoon when Wickham, Dr Cannan and a constable rode into the station. Boller’s aid had not been delivered by European initiative but Indigenous. An Aboriginal man, inde- pendently of events at Whiteside, had ridden out to check upon the sawyers on the afternoon of Friday 10 september and found Waller’s body propped up against a tree. He immediately rode to get help bypassing the griffins and informed officials in Brisbane of the attack.54 since a dray could make the Whiteside-Brisbane journey in five hours,55 an experienced rider on a good horse could have made it to Brisbane in an hour or two. Boller had lost precious hours of treatment. We will never know, given the state of medical knowledge, whether it made any difference to his outcome. He died in the Brisbane Hospital the next day.56 the tensions inside the griffin family did not abate. John, the youngest son, wrote affectionately of his father when he recorded george’s death in the station diary. He managed the station after his father’s death,57 and shared his father’s hostility towards Francis;58 yet there was coldness between the father and the youngest son too.59 It was Jane griffin who inherited her husband’s portion of the run and upon her death she bequeathed her estate to neither Francis nor John but to the middle son William60 who had been expelled by george in 1849. this paper has touched on only a fraction of the incidents of discord that marked daily life in the Whiteside station diaries in the years 1847 to 1851. It is not intended to suggest that there was anything abnormal about the griffins. In fact given the tensions in running any family business, they probably fared better than many colonial families. the value in focusing on these daily frictions from colonial politics and religious and ethnic divisions down to master-servant, neighbour-neighbour and father-son relations is to remind us of the inward preoccupations of Europeans even 589 on a frontier. When faced with a group threat, their response was troubled by discord to the point where Boller’s medical aid came as a result of Indigenous initiative not European. It serves to jolt our assumptions of European mastery and Aboriginal subjection and hopefully to look anew at Indigenous agency on this cultural and geographic frontier. the historical narrative has for too long been dominated by what post- colonial scholars call ‘whiteness’. the privileging of white success and white interests has perhaps caused us to overstate European agency and to understate autonomous Indigenous action. on the colonial frontier, Europeans and traditional owners inhabited parallel systems of criminal justice, political power, religion and governance which intersected at times to suit individual and group interests. If we start from this premise we can begin to comprehend Indigenous scholarship’s emphasis on sovereignty and to re-visit misplaced assumptions of European agency-Indigenous subjection. Endnotes 1 Diary Kept by Captain george griffin at Whiteside via Petrie “Moreton Bay”, 1st January 1847-16th May 1849, oM72-42/1, Jol. griffin’s idiosyncratic spelling, punctuation and expression have been retained throughout this paper in all direct quotations from his diary. 2 Entry for 5 July 1848, griffin Diary. 3 Entries for 26 June and 2 July 1848, griffin Diary. 4 Erica long, ‘Early White settlement on the Pine River’, Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland, vol. 16 no. 5, 1997, pp. 189-209; Erica long, ‘A History of the timber Industry in the Pine Rivers District’, Access History, vol. 2 no. 1, 1998, pp. 55-73. 5 Karen Martin, ‘“Isn’t it time they learned to behave properly?” Writing and righting the history of Aboriginal regulation of non-Aboriginal outsiders’, pp. 6-7 presented at the History Wars: Factious Fiction or Fictious Facts? symposium, Indigenous studies Research, Qut, Kelvin grove 27 september 2006. 6 the main sources of information about the attack are R v Moggy Moggy in supreme Court, Criminal Jurisdiction: Clerk of the Peace, Brisbane 1851, 9/6366, sRNsW; R v Dundalli (2) in supreme Court, Criminal Jurisdiction: Clerk of the Peace, Brisbane 1854, 9/6386, sRNsW; Moreton Bay Courier 15 November 1851; Moreton Bay Free Press 28 November 1854. 7 simpson to Colonial secretary, 26 May 1844, in stephen simpson, The Simpson Letterbook, [trans. gerry langevad] st lucia: Anthropology Museum, 1979, 26 May 1844, p. 15. 8 Brisbane Town News from the Sydney Morning Herald 1842-46, Brisbane, Brisbane History group, 1989, entry for 12 october 1843, p. 30. 9 long, ‘Early White settlement’, p. 191. 10 JD lang, Cooksland in North-Eastern Australia, london: longman, 1847, p. 118; Dimity Dornan & Denis Cryle, The Petrie Family, st lucia, uQP, 1992, pp. 1-13; long, ‘Early White settlement’, p. 191 11 lang, Cooksland, p. 118. 590 12 long, ‘Early White Settlement’, p. 191. 13 see changes in handwriting in entries for May 1851 and especially the entry for 1 June 1851. george griffin, Remarks andt ransactions at the Whiteside station 1 Jan 1851-25 Dec 1851 oM72-42/2 Jol. John griffin also filled in the daily log when his father was away from the station as did a third member of the household when both were absent; see entries for 30 Jan 1848 and also 27 July 1848, george griffin, Diary, oM72-42/1, Jol 14 For lang’s important and polemical role in these events see Peter Cochrane, Colonial Ambition: Foundations of Australian Democracy, Melbourne, MuP, 2006, esp. pp. 267- 82. 15 Mission Diary, Monday 28 March 1842, lang papers, CY Reel 579, Mitchell library. 16 Colonial Observer, 24 August 1842, 21 september 1842 & 24 september 1842. 17 thomas Archer, Recollections of a Rambling Life: with additional chapters by Murdoch Wales, Bowen Hills, Boolarong, 1988, [facs. of 1897], pp. 105-6. 18 lang, Cooksland, Chapter XII but especially pp. 474-8. 19 see the controversy surrounding his funeral in Moreton Bay Courier, 29 January 1848, Keith Rayner, ‘gregor, John (1808 – 1848)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 1, Melbourne, Melbourne university Press, 1966, pp 472-3; John Mackenzie- smith, The Scottish Presence at Moreton Bay 1837-59, Brisbane, BHg, 2005, pp. 143- 52. 20 According to a letter from tom Archer to his parents in March 1844, gregor actually established the station as early as 1842, but stephen simpson reported that he did not take out a licence until July 1845. see lorna McDonald, Over Earth and Sea: The Archers of Tolderodden and Gracemere, st lucia, uQP & CQuP, 1999, pp. 99-100; simpson, letterbook, letter to Colonial secretary 11 March 1848, p. 27. 21 Entry for 18 February 1849, griffin Diary. 22 Entries for 4 February, 5 February, 9 February, 10 February, 11 February, 17 April, 24 April, 25 April, 9 June and 22 June 1847, griffin Diary. 23 Andrew gregor apparently named his station after his birthplace, Forgieside; see Mackenzie-smith, Scottish Presence, p. 144. 24 griffin, Diary, entries for 18 May, 19 May, 9 June 1847. 25 tom Archer to his mother, 24 May 1842, Archer letters, oM80-10/39-75, Jol. 26 lang, Cooksland, pp. 470-73. 27 libby Connors, the ‘Birth of the Prison’ and the Death of Convictism, PhD thesis, uQ, 1990, pp. 169-70; Denis Cryle, ‘snakes in the grass: the press and race relations at Moreton Bay 1846-47’, Brisbane: The Aboriginal Presence 1824-1860, Brisbane, BHg, 1992, pp. 69, 71-78; Mackenzie-smith, Scottish Presence, pp. 181-82. 28 For Hausmann and Wagner’s clerical ordinations see Janette Nolan, Pastor J. g. Hausmann: A Queensland Pioneer 1838-1901, PhD thesis, uQ, 1964 & Claire Wagner, papers, oM92-152, Jol. For their future landholding activities see Nolan & Zillman Family Papers, oM74-28 Box 8889, Jol. 29 gold and smith cited in long, ‘Early White settlement’, p. 195. 30 Entries for 28 November 1848, 5 February and 11 March 1849, griffin Diary. 31 libby Connors & Bernadette turner, ‘”I cannot do anymore”: the Irish orphan girls at Moreton Bay’ in trevor McClaughlin, ed., Irish Women in Colonial Australia, sydney, Allen & unwin, 1998, pp. 107, 111. 591 32 see for examples, entries for 13 November 1848 and 15 March 1849, griffin Diary. long, ‘Early White settlement’, p. 195 has more examples of the employment of Exiles and John griffin’s support for the renewal of transportation. 33 see the case of Ashcroft in entries 19 May and 7 November 1847; also 2 & 3 March 1847, griffin Diary; entries for 7 & 10 July 1851, Remarks &transactions. 34 For examples of these workplace disruptions see griffin Diary, 2-3 March 1847, 7 March 1847, 12 March 1847, 22 March 1847, 19 May 1847, 15 July 1847, 16 July 1847, 6 August 1847, 2 February 1848, 11-12 september 1849, 27 september 1849; Remarks & transactions, 7 July 1851, 10 July 1851, 28 November 1851. 35 griffin Diary, 30 August-1 september 1847. 36 lang, Cooksland, pp. 119-20. 37 griffin Diary, 30 April 1849. 38 Remarks & transactions, 17 November 1851. 39 griffin Diary, entries for 23 June, 21 August & 22 August 1847. 40 long, ‘timber Industry’, p. 58. 41 griffin Diary, 1-2 september 1847. 42 smith’s testimony in R v Moggy Moggy in supreme Court, Criminal Jurisdiction: Clerk of the Peace, Brisbane 1851, 9/6366, sRNsW. 43 Constance Campbell Petrie discusses incidents of Yillbong’s life in Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences of Early Queensland, Melbourne, lloyd o’Neil. 1975 [facs. of 1904] pp. 165-70; Moreton Bay Courier 14 November 1846; Brisbane Town News 30 November 1846, p. 164 44 Brisbane town News 28 December 1846, p. 168. 45 libby Connors, ‘traditional law and Indigenous Resistance at Moreton Bay 1842- 1855, Part II’ ANZLH E-Journal, refereed paper no. 11, pp. 2-3; Connors, the ‘birth of the prison’, ch. 5; Cryle, ‘snakes in the grass’, pp. 69-79; Mackenzie-smith, Scottish Presence, pp. 181-2. 46 Inquiry into affrays with Aborigines at York’s Hollow l/no. 47/2542 in CsIl no.10 Archival Estrays 81, Dixon library; William Augustine Duncan, Autobiography, pp. 67-70, CY Reel 162, Mitchell library. 47 tom Archer to his father 24 March 1844 cited in McDonald, Over Earth and Sea, pp. 101-2. 48 long, ‘Early White settlement’, pp. 189-209. 49 the diary does not give Marjoribanks’ first name and searches of Births Marriages and Deaths for New south Wales online have not enabled conclusive identification. 50 griffin Diary, 6 september 1847. 51 griffin Diary, 7 september 1847. 52 Among them was the local leader, Dundalli. this event is explored in Connors, ‘traditional law … Part II’, pp. 3-4. 53 griffin Diary, 10 september 1847. 54 griffin Diary, 11 september 1847. 55 long, ‘Early White settlement’, p. 195. 56 Moreton Bay Courier 15 November 1851; R v Moggy Moggy in supreme Court, Criminal Jurisdiction: Clerk of the Peace, Brisbane 1851, 9/6366, sRNsW; Moreton Bay Free Press 28 November 1854. 57 Remarks & transactions, 1 June 1851; griffin Diary, 22 April 1849. 58 see long, ‘Early White settlement’, p. 193. 59 griffin Diary, 22 April 1849. 592 60 long, ‘Early White settlement’, p. 198.